Perdition to paradise (hopefully)

[greying_mantis]

Thanks Georgie-boy, I didn’t want that buce anyway 🫠

-ssshlorp-

 

[bazz]

If you want to go down the Solufeed route I can work it out for you (using the IFC Aquarium Fertilizer Calculator) when I have a spare hour in the next day or two, and chart it for your understanding.

I got ahead of myself here, @Happi has already done all the math's and descriptions, Solufeed 2:1:4 and Solufeed Sodium Free TEC or Solufeed Coir TEC Combination. Well worth a read of the whole thread.
Cheers!

 

[PeerUnk]

Hi nice people,

I have to say however, I have never yet seen, personally, a tank sustained over time with healthy plants and, air stone use during the photo period, excluding of course, potentially, plants such as frogbit taking advantage at the surface of the CO2 in the air.

If I showed you a picture of my tank with healthy plants and told you aeration is running 24/7, would that help? And do you any specifics accompanied with that picture?

I personally would find the sorts of room CO2 levels you cite intolerable. Most folks start to feel drowsy above around 1,000 ppm, or so I am led to believe

1500 is not a goal at all, I try to keep is below 800-1000. But when the entire family is watching tv in the evening, my permanent house ventilation system does not adjust itself and CO2 creeps up to 1500 ppm.

Air stones, run, while injecting CO2 just mean a loss of the injected CO2 and. that may be, the primary reason most of us. with heavily planted tanks, decide to do without air stones.

Yes indeed, aeration while injecting CO2 would drive the injected CO2 straight out the water. It would be a complete waste of CO2 to my opinion.

Will the vigorous aeration which is caused by an air stone, overall, help or hinder plants, in the typical room atmosphere, significantly?

I believe when one has a heavily stocked planted tank, CO2 can run out during the day, so aeration will help maintaining a low but steady level of CO2. Aeration could hinder just as well when CO2 is above equilibrium, which would be when injecting CO2 (already pointed out) or just before/after turning the lights on.

Would the dissolving of relatively modest amounts of CO2 into water by this process be sufficient for plant maintenance?

Oh, for sure in my experience. But it depends on very much on the specific plant species. Some grow perfectly fine at 0.75 - 1.5 mg/L (like the forgiving ‘beginners’ species, but R wallichii just as well at pH<6.5 KH=0) , but for quit some, elevated CO2 is mandatory and will simply die in my tanks. For all species growth is much slower than with CO2 injection. Slow healthy growth is what I prefer, I don’t like weekly pruning (nor the presence of a big CO2 canister which has the potential to kill people when things go wrong).

Hard water you mention, the general assumption is high KH and higher pH affect some nutrient availability like iron and/or makes it harder for plants to take in some nutrients. To my experience some plant species are adapted to higher KH like for instance Ludwigia repens and Vallisneria.

I know that figures as high as 30 ppm can be theoretically achieved with air stones, but I don't know how one balances that out against the loss of the CO2 generated from the substrate and the filter. I'd be interested in any research or indeed personal experience, as I say often, I am not a scientist.

Not sure I understand this section. But I would doubt 30 ppm in a tank with aeration. My 24/7 CO2 monitoring device never measured anything higher than 2.8 mg/L, which is equivalent to 1800 ppm in air. But I do aerate at night… I have no figures how much CO2 is respirated at night. I will test that the upcoming weeks.

In my experience air stones are good for fish but apparently bad for plants, I have watched a few folks on Youtube advocate air stones to utilise atmospheric CO2 but to be candid, their plants never look that healthy to me but other factors may be at play.

Aeration is good for fish indeed, like the rest of the micro environment in a tank, which heavily depends on oxygen for survival, like we humans do. That’s the main benefit of aeration: diffusion oxygen into the water (when there is to little), just like plant photosynthesis does.

My own experience is, that turning off an air stone during the photo period generally improves plant health within weeks and, that with adequate light, without an air stone during the photo period, the plants will provide sufficient oxygen for small fish and invertebrates. Running an air stone at night seems to me the best compromise.

If your plant health improves by shutting down an air stone, that’s great. Then water does not run out of CO2 during the day. But that might not be the case for everybody. Nor for your own tank when you increase light intensity or increase plant mass.

To summarize my reasons to run air stone 24/7. The tank water always has 100% oxygen, and always has a low, steady, non-depleted CO2 level to support healthy photosynthesis.

I have to replace my broken O2 sensor in my monitoring device. But I do some tests to show the differences in CO2 and O2 levels when not aerating at all, just during the day, just during the night and for 24 hours/day.

I might show the graphs and write an article about it, when there is public interest in it. Accompanied with pictures of the tank, and what I do next to oxygen and CO2 to keep the plants happy.

Cheers!

 

[greying_mantis]

Update

I’m not keeping track of days anymore so I’ll just put “update” at the top for general journaling, musings and photos.

50% water change as the nitrates are still testing quite high. I found my kitchen tap hose adapter in the shed - I’d mostly forgotten I had it as it didn’t fit the tap in the previous house. Works beautifully here.

Finished the whitespot treatment. The large female Congo has lost her spot but small female still has hers - not sure how long to give it to heal before I conclude another round of treatment is needed (if indeed it is whitespot). The cats are still flashing but again, presumably they will still be in some discomfort while they heal even if the active infection has resolved. I’ll keep an eye on them and make a decision in a few days.

Girlfriend and I are now actively planning her shrimp/nano tank. I dug a small rimless out of the shed and found some forgotten mopani wood and a couple of sponge/air driven filters. Leak-testing-cum-water-logging in progress. We have loads of small plants left in the nursery tank and I’ll rescue some of the buce from the synos who have both decided tiny leaves are cat treats. I am learning an expensive lesson about which plants are G&T safe (or should I say, safe from G&T). T even had a good go at one of the anubias!

The floaters continue to do well. I don’t know what caused the first lot of frogbit to disintegrate but this lot seem fine. Maybe the tank was just that nutrient depleted but I still wouldn’t have expected them to vanish entirely in only a week or so.

One of the frogbit has rounder, thinner, flatter leaves than the others. Definitely not water lettuce or RRF. Maybe a different frogbit species hitchhiked in? I’ll try to remember to get a photo tomorrow.

 

[greying_mantis]

Frogbit ID

Are all three Amazon frogbit or is the one on the left (marked) something else?

 

[Fishfur]

Looks like frogbit to me but grown under less intense light so it isn’t showing the markings the other two have, which come with intense enough light.